Arch Enemy (35 page)

The others were behind her. Most had stumbled, like her. She counted heads. Ten, with her. Everyone had made it out alive.

“Everyone okay?” she yelled out. She scanned people for injuries. Her father first—no bleeding. Bloch was fine, too, as was Smith, Lily, Conley, and—

Shepard. Everyone else stood, but he stayed on the ground. Alive, but . . .

“I'm going to need a little help getting up,” he said, grunting. His left calf was bleeding, caught by a piece of flying debris. Peter Conley lifted him to his feet and helped him walk.

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “You did good. I'll just say one thing.”

“What?”

“I really hope we were up-to-date on our insurance for that place.”

F
rieze dialed Conley as she drove, honking her horn against the afternoon rush-hour gridlock. Straight to voice mail.

She had run out of the FBI office as soon as Gus told her about the explosion. She was supposed to have stayed. She had duties in the office that needed her attention during a crisis. She didn't care.

She made the call again and again as she sped her way through downtown traffic, getting voice mail each time. She found a parking spot several blocks away from the Hampton Building and ran the rest of the way, flashing her badge to get past the police cordon. As she approached, she saw that smoke was coming out of the garage.

She ran inside the garage and saw a team of firemen standing around a truck, occupying the parking area that led into Zeta. The wall around the door inside was black with soot.

“Did you find anyone?” she called out to no one in particular.

“No bodies yet,” said a fireman, taking his helmet off. “But it's huge down there. I wonder what that was supposed to be.”

Tentative relief washed over her. “Any idea of the cause?”

“From the patterns I'd say it was some flammable gas. Probably a natural gas leak.”

Frieze wandered around the garage, looking for cameras that could tell the tale of what had happened. There were none, because of course they'd never allow that.

Her phone rang. Peter? No. Gus.

“Where the hell did you go? We have some suspects wanted in connection with the Legion attack on Acevedo. Chambers told me to forward you the profiles, so I'm sending them to your phone.”

Frieze pinched the root of her nose. “Sure. I'll take a look in a minute.” She moved toward the door to Zeta.

“Hey!” said the fireman she'd been talking to. “That's off-limits until we've cleared it.”

“FBI,” she said, flashing her badge.

“I don't care if you're the Pope. There are noxious gases down there, and I don't want to deal with the paperwork of a Fed croaking in my fire. So stay right where you are.”

Frieze bristled but complied. She wasn't about to die searching through the ruins for Peter Conley's body.

The mental image made her tear up.

She needed to compose herself, get her mind off this for a while, until the firemen had a chance to search inside and give her definite answers.

Frieze found a low concrete wall in the garage where she could sit. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked through the files Gus had sent her.

“Oh my God.”

She ran back outside as fast as her legs would take her.

R
eclining in the front passenger seat of the noisy 1970 Ford Econoline, Alex poked at her burned hand—second degree, pocked with blisters. She ran a finger over the red skin. It blazed with pain. She took stock of her injuries—the cuts on her legs, the abrasions on her wrists, and now this. But her leg was mended.
Silver linings, Morgan
.

The van was a recent acquisition, Alex found out, in response to the Legion's ability to make any car's electronics go
poof
. Strickland and Smith, along with Kirby, disappeared to do whatever business occupied their time.

Her father was driving and hadn't noticed the burn, which Alex was happy enough about. He didn't need the extra worry, especially not given that his arms were bandaged from hand to shoulder. She'd just grit her teeth and bear the pain, like he did.

“So what are we going to do?” she asked him. “How are we going to strike back?”

“You aren't going to do anything. First chance I get, I'm going to send you with your mother, out of harm's way.”

“You heard what he said. Mom's not out of harm's way. None of us is.”

“It's going to be more dangerous wherever I am.”

Anger rose inside Alex. “I just saved
everyone
,” she said, raising her voice. “Where do you get off talking to me like I'm a kid?”

She braced for his rejoinder, but it never came. Whether it was because everyone in the back had just heard her, or because something had really changed in him, he just said, “You're right. I'm sorry.”

Twenty minutes later, the van pulled into the garage of a trim brick suburban home in Quincy, south of Boston. Once the garage was closed—reinforced steel, Alex noted, dressed up to look like a regular wooden garage door—they all got out. Conley opened the electronic lock on the door and let them through.

It was a weirdly normal house, even if the furniture was a bit cheesy. Alex flopped onto an armchair, laying her burned hand flat against the armrest, basking in the coolness of the upholstery.

Lying on the couch, leg bleeding, Shepard gave O'Neal directions to open a hidden compartment where he had stashed a pile of preconfigured laptop computers. O'Neal set them on the table with an
oof
and then drew the charger cables, packed in tight figure-eight loops.

“How do we get them online?” she asked. Shepard didn't answer. He had an odd blank expression.

“We can't do it,” he said. “I can't fight them on my own on the digital front. They're beyond me.” For the confident-to-the-point-of-arrogance Shepard to admit this must have been wrenching.

O'Neal crouched next to him. There was something intimate in the gesture, and Alex remembered walking in on them back at Zeta. She averted her eyes but perked up her head to eavesdrop.

“Hey,” Karen said. “Look at me. You are a goddamn badass. You were doing this hacktivism crap when you were in high school. You've graduated past this. So shut up with this self-pity bullshit. You're my freaking hero, man.”

“I let them through, and they destroyed it. Zeta's
gone
, Kar.”

“It's always easier to destroy. But we're trying to protect. We're trying to make something, Linc. It's an uphill battle for us. But we're going to beat them. Because we're better than they are.”

His face brightened. “Damn right we are.”

They kissed. Alex nearly squealed.

“Shepard!” Bloch called to him. “We need to set these up. Morgan, Randall, Conley. Over here. Let's powwow.”

Alex was left out once more.

Something drew her attention in the corner of her eye—one computer left in the hidden compartment. Karen had drawn out only as many as they needed. Alex stood up, trying to play it like she wanted to go to the bathroom, and bent down to pick it up as she passed.

Once she was locked in the guest restroom, she booted up the computer and logged on to her deep web client, following the procedure Simon had taught her. She opened the messaging service.

There was one new message from Simon. All it said was:

 

Alex, I'm scared. Please help.

 

The words wrenched at her heart. Simon. Her imagination exploded with scenarios of what he might be facing, each more horrible than the last. Her breath grew quick and shallow and she grabbed handfuls of her hair as guilty thoughts assaulted her, thoughts of Simon, dead, going to prison, killing people.

Alex gritted her teeth and balled her hands into fists, forcing her breathing to return to normal. She wasn't going to lose it to despair. She grabbed the computer and walked out of the bathroom. They would rescue Simon, and he'd be their key to finding Praetorian.

In her resolve Alex nearly bumped into Karen. “I was looking for that,” she said, pointing at the computer with a suspicious glint in her eye.

Alex's stammers of explanation were cut short by someone knocking on the front door of the house. Banging, more like it. Everyone turned to look. Her father reached for his gun and Lily took her position flat against the wall by the entrance.

“Conley!” came a muffled woman's voice. “Conley, open the door! Damn it, please be in here. Conley!”

Peter Conley, looking perplexed, walked to the front door, unlocked it, and opened it.

Lisa Frieze.

“Are you safe?” she said, barging inside. “Is everyone okay?”

“We're fine,” Conley said. “There was—”

“An explosion at your headquarters. I know.” She was talking a mile a minute. “Listen. You have to get out of here. They're coming for you.”

“What?”

“The police are coming for you all. They tracked you to this location, I don't know how. They'll be arriving in minutes.”

Everyone looked to Bloch for leadership.

“Get moving,” she said. “We need materials. Pack up the computers. Get the guns out of the armory.”

Police sirens sang in the distance, growing closer. Lily drew the curtains on the windows closed. Bloch crouched to open a cabinet under the kitchen counter. Inside was a safe with an electronic keypad. She entered a combination.

“There's a tunnel in the basement,” she said, opening the door to the safe. “It's well-hidden and leads to the house behind this one. There's a car in the garage. Don't call attention to yourselves and you'll make it out.”

She pulled out a bag of money—Alex figured it was at least one hundred grand. Her father opened a cabinet in the living room and unlocked a similar safe, this one much taller. Inside were guns—black handguns and semiautomatics on racks, boxes of ammo stacked on the bottom. Conley brought a briefcase and helped her father load the handguns and ammo.

Police cars converged on the house, tires screeching. Lily looked out through a gap in the curtains. “They're here,” she said.

Frieze addressed Bloch. “They know there are people in here. If everyone goes, they'll find us. I suggest some people stay behind. But it's your call.”

Shepard was first to speak. “I can't go. I'll just slow you down.”

“We need someone who knows how to work with computers.”

A bullhorn whined outside. “
You are surrounded
.”

“If I go, we all get caught,” Shepard said. “Don't make me insist. Playing noble doesn't really suit me.”

“Morgan, Conley, Lily, Alex,” said Bloch. “You go. We're going to need you on the outside. Karen. You go with them.”

“What about you?” Karen asked.

“
Come out with your hands up!
”

“I'm staying,” Bloch said. “You're all more useful than I'm going to be.” Bloch wrote down a number on a pad of paper. “Get in touch with Smith.” She handed it to Karen O'Neal, who glanced at it, then folded it up and held it out to Morgan.

“I've already memorized it,” she said. “Diversify your risks.”

Alex spoke up. “Someone's going to check, right? They're going to see that whatever reason they're arresting you for is bogus—aren't they?”

“On a terrorism case, I'm afraid it won't be soon enough,” said Bloch. “If we're caught, it'll be weeks at the minimum before any one of us sees the light of day.”

“
I repeat, come out with your hands up!
”

Lisa opened the front door, both hands raised, holding her badge in her right. “Lisa Frieze, FBI!” she called out. “I am in contact with the suspects inside. They are going to come out peacefully!”

“Time for you to go,” said Bloch.

Morgan hustled Alex down the stairs to the basement. Conley had taken the lead and was already holding open a wooden panel that held a set of tools and swiveled upward to reveal the secret tunnel. Alex ran headlong into the darkness to the sound of heavy boots invading the house upstairs.

I
t was dark by the time Morgan pulled the van up to the parking lot of a rundown roadside motel right off the highway, bordered by forest on three sides. He sent Alex to get the keys to the rooms because among them she was the only one who wasn't wanted by the FBI. Not even sleazy motels were too keen on harboring terrorists.

Alex got two adjoining rooms for the five of them. They shuffled inside, watching for anyone who might see them. They congregated in the same room, which looked like every other cheap motel room in the country—two hard beds with dirty, sticky bedspreads, peeling wallpaper, an ancient TV on a stand, bad art hanging on the wall.

All were so exhausted that they collapsed in place, forming a rough circle, Lily and Karen on the beds, Morgan on the single chair, and Alex on the grimy carpet.

Conley walked in from the adjoining room. “I spoke to Smith. Bloch and Shepard are safe in custody, but it'll be some time before they're free. He's working on lifting our warrants.” He cleared his throat. “Most of the CIA prisons were evacuated in time after Praetorian's leak. All but one. Smith wouldn't say where, but it got swarmed by militias. All the prisoners were released. The guards were executed.”

The group was unresponsive. They looked like a group of shell-shocked soldiers, with deep bags under their eyes, faces drained of blood, blank expressions. O'Neal was gnawing on her fingernails. His daughter was nursing a burn on her right hand he hadn't noticed before.

Morgan broke the silence. “We're running like rats,” he said. “And all that running gets us is that we're chased into an even worse corner. We need to stop running and start attacking.”

“Great, in theory,” said Lily. She had washed her face, and this was maybe the first time Morgan had seen her without makeup on. “I'm all for it. Now what does it mean? What do we do? We've got an enemy that always seems to know where we are but we can't seem to find even with all our resources, let alone like this. And whatever we throw at him, he's not only ready for, but uses it against us. What do we do?”

“I say we sleep,” said O'Neal, who was barely holding her eyelids open. “We can't make good decisions in this state.”

“I want a plan,” he said. “Or a shred of something. Anything that will put us on the offensive.”

“Simon,” Alex said.

“Who?” asked Lily.

“Simon. My friend. The one I pushed to join the Ekklesia with me. The recruiting front for the Legion. He sent me a message. He wants out. He's scared. He could be our way to Praetorian.”

“We tried that with you, remember?” said Conley.

“That was different. They found me out because of Dad. And I didn't know anything then, no inside information. But Simon—whatever they're planning, they're going to be using him.”

“The kid has a point,” said O'Neal, who had given up trying to sit up, and now lay in bed with her eyes closed.

“As long as you know how to contact him,” said Lily. “It wouldn't be much use to us if he couldn't find us.”

“I already have,” she said. Morgan didn't like this at all. More secrets she'd been keeping. More lies. “He wants help. Which I think means he might be able to help us.”

“What do you think?” asked Conley, addressing Morgan, who understood it was about more than just finding Praetorian.

“If it's our best plan, then it's the best plan,” he said.

“But on one condition,” said Alex. “If we go through Simon, I want to make sure he's safe. I don't want to use people anymore.”

“That isn't always an option,” said Morgan.

“There is no other option,” she said. “I'm making this the only one. If we use Simon, we help him as much as we'd do one of ours.” She raised her voice to address the group. “Does anyone have a problem with that?”

If anyone did, they didn't speak up.

“All right,” she said. “I need a computer.”

Conley spoke as Alex wrote her message. “No matter what, if we're going up against the Legion, we need someone who knows their way around a computer,” said Conley. “We're up against impossible odds. If they have that large of an advantage over us, there's no hope.

Lily stood up. “I have an idea who we can call.”